We watched Ghostbusters first. Much as I like The Parent Trap, I have to admit that Ghostbusters is pretty funny. My favorite part is when that giant marshmallow guy bursts. I think it’s Kristy’s favorite part, too. As soon as he exploded, she said, “I’m starving! Let’s toast marshmallows, Dawn. Or make s’mores.”
“Kristy, we don’t have stuff like that at my house. It’s junk food.”
Kristy and Claudia glanced at each other. “Be right back,” they said, and ran upstairs.
They returned holding a bag of marshmallows, some candy bars, a box of graham crackers, a bag of potato chips, a supply of M&M’s and some crackers.
“Pig-out time!” said Kristy. “I hope you don’t mind, Dawn. We can’t have a slumber party without this stuff. It isn’t normal.” She tossed the crackers to me. “Those are for you and Stacey,” she said.
Stacey and I looked at each other. We made faces. But then we couldn’t help laughing. It was kind of funny.
“Where’d you get all that?” I asked.
“Mary Anne and Claudia and I bought it this afternoon,” said Kristy. “We thought it might be a good idea to come prepared. Don’t worry, we paid for it ourselves, not out of the club treasury.”
Kristy pressed the pause button on the VCR and Bill Murray froze in action. “Quick! Let’s make the s’mores before the movie comes back on!” she cried.
Kristy grabbed the marshmallows.
Mary Anne grabbed the graham crackers.
Claudia grabbed the Hershey’s bars.
The three of them tore off, leaving Stacey and me behind in a trail of dust (so to speak).
“Boy,” I said, “Just because we don’t eat that junk of theirs.”
“Really,” agreed Stacey. “I feel like a leper.”
“I feel like a nerd.”
“We shouldn’t, though,” said Stacey. “They’re the ones who’re going to end up with pimples.”
I giggled. “Let’s get them.”
“Pimples?”
“No! I mean, I have a plan. We’ll get back at Kristy and the others. Remember our search for a secret passage?”
Stacey nodded. “Well, I found one.”
“No.”
“Yup.”
“Honest?”
“Cross my heart. So here’s what I think we should do.”
I leaned over and began to whisper to Stacey. We had just finished planning, when Kristy and Claudia and Mary Anne came back. They were eating these gooey concoctions and had chocolate all over their fingers. Every time they took a bite of their s’mores, the melted marshmallow would string out between their mouths and hands.
Stacey and I had a hard time keeping straight faces. Somehow, though, we made it through the rest of Ghostbusters without giving anything away.
As soon as the movie was over, Mary Anne dove for the rewind button. “Time for Sixteen Candles,” she said.
“Why don’t we watch it later?” I suggested casually. “Wouldn’t it be fun to watch it at, like, one or two this morning?”
“Yeah!” said Kristy enthusiastically. (I knew I could count on her. She loves to stay up late.)
Mary Anne looked disappointed, but she didn’t want to argue with the rest of us.
“Let’s go up to my room for awhile,” I said. “You know Cam Geary’s girlfriend, Mary Anne?”
“Corrie Lalique?” she replied immediately.
“Yeah. I bet with a little more make-up I could make you look just like her.”
“Really? Oh, hey, great!”
Mary Anne was the first one upstairs. The rest of us followed. After we’d worked on her for a while, I said, “Boy, am I thirsty.”
“Oh, me, too,” chimed in Stacey.
“So am I,” said the others at once. (It figured, after all that sugar.)
“I’ll go get some sodas,” I said. “Come with me, Stace. Okay?”
“You have soda?” asked Claudia skeptically. “Or do you mean Perrier or sparkling, salt-less mineral water from an artesian well or something?”
I tried not to sound sarcastic. “Yes, we have soda. Real soda. Mom bought it for the party. One hundred percent sugar.”
“Good,” said Claudia, not cracking a smile.
“Come on, Stace.”
We ran downstairs. It was time to put our plan into action.
“What’s your mom going to say?” asked Stacey nervously.
“Nothing,” I replied. “I warned her when we went upstairs before. And Jeff’s already in bed, so we don’t have to worry about him. Unless the screaming gets too loud.”
Stacey laughed. She and I stopped in the kitchen for flashlights. We turned them on, aimed the beams out the back door, and crept outside as quietly as possible. I led Stacey into the barn, shoved aside the bale of hay, and showed her the trapdoor. We lowered ourselves down the ladder.
“I don’t believe it,” whispered Stacey slowly. “This is awesome.”
“Are you scared?” I asked. I hadn’t told her about Jared Mullray.
“Not really. I’m not wild about the dark, but … let’s go!”
When we’d climbed the flight of stairs and turned the corner, we paused to listen. Very faintly we could hear the voices of Mary Anne, Claudia, and Kristy.
“Now?” whispered Stacey.
“Now,” I replied. “And when they’ve had enough, just follow me.”
“Okay.”
Stacey rapped lightly on a wall of the passage. I scratched on another.
We paused. The girls were still talking.
“Louder,” I whispered.
We rapped and scratched more loudly. The talking stopped, then started again.
“Closer,” I suggested.
We crept down the passage. Our friends’ voices grew louder.
Rap, rap. Rap, rap, rap.
Scritch, scratch.
Then I distinctly heard Claudia say, “Did you guys hear something?”
Stacey and I tried not to laugh.
“Try wailing,” said Stacey.
“Oooooo-eeeeee. Heeeeeelp meeeeee!” I wailed.
“Whoooooo-oooooo-eeeeee. I caaaaaannot reeeeeest!” cried Stacey. It was a brilliant choice of words.
“Aughh!” cried one of the girls in my room, but I couldn’t tell which one.
“Oh, no! It’s Jared! It’s the ghost of the secret passage!” yelped Mary Anne.
“What?” asked Kristy. “What ghost?” (She was probably thinking of old Ben Brewer.)
“What secret passage?” added Claudia.
Rap, rap, rap. Bang, bang, bang.
I noticed a pipe, and tapped my flashlight on it. Clink, clink.
“Aughh!” The shrieking in the bedroom sounded more frightened. We heard a crash.
“I think that’s enough,” I said. “Come on.”
I dashed to the end of the passage and released the catch. The wall of my bedroom slowly opened inward.
Stacey and I were looking in on a disaster area. A chair had been knocked over. A container of eye shadow was on the rug. The sleeping bags were rumpled, as if they’d been run over by galloping horses. And Kristy, Claudia, and Mary Anne were huddled on my bed.
“I told you it was the ghost,” Mary Anne was moaning.
Then Stacey and I stuck our heads in the room. When Kristy saw us, she fell off the bed.
There was a moment of silence.
“You!” shrieked Mary Anne. “It was you!”
“You stinkers!” Kristy exploded, rubbing one elbow. She got to her feet.
Stacey and I laughed so hard that tears ran down our faces. We couldn’t speak. We dropped our flashlights on the bed and I closed the wall behind me.
“You found a secret passage,” was all Claudia could say. “How?”
I explained. I told my friends the story — Nicky, Jared Mullray, the nickel. But I left out the parts about the small key, and the nighttime noises.
“Oh, let’s go inside!” exclaimed Claudia.
“Please? I’ve
never been in a true secret passage. And I’ve always wanted to have the chance.”
“Okay,” I said. “Sure. We’ll all go.”
I was reaching for the wall when …
Rap, rap, rap.
It had come from the passage. Wide-eyed, I whirled around. All four of my friends were behind me. I dashed out of my room. Mom was reading in bed. Jeff was sound asleep.
I looked at my watch. Almost one o’clock. It wasn’t Nicky.
In a panic, I went back to my room and fastened the lock on the wall. “Come on, you guys. Bring your sleeping bags. We’ll stay in the living room tonight.”
And we did. But it took us forever to fall asleep.
Did my secret passage have a ghost? I hoped I’d never find out.
The next morning dawned clear and sunny. I was awakened by the sound of a catbird outside the open window. The scent of newly mown grass drifted in and mingled with the smells of toast and eggs coming from the kitchen.
I rolled over sleepily.
“Hi,” whispered Kristy from her sleeping bag.
“Morning,” I replied.
Stacey, Claudia, and Mary Anne were still asleep.
“You know,” said Kristy, “we only have a few, and I mean a few, more days until school starts again.”
I made a face. “I know.”
“We better use them wisely.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, we’ve just had a slumber party. While there’s still time, we better try to cram in a few more good activities. Like swimming.”
“Going to the movies,” I said.
“Having a gossip-fest.”
“Lying around in the sun reading magazines.”
“Playing tennis.”
“Swinging on the rope in the barn.”
“Going to the mall,” murmured Stacey, without bothering to open her eyes.
“Making s’more s’mores,” mumbled Claudia.
“Having a cookout,” said Mary Anne, only her face was buried in her pillow and it sounded like she said, “Havee a fuh-fow.”
“Boy,” I exclaimed, “we’ve got a lot to do and very little time. We better get going!”
I felt excited, exhilarated. With friends like these, and so much to look forward to, who could worry about a crazy two hundred-year-old guy named Jared Mullray? Not me!
* * *
Dear Reader,
As a young reader I, like Dawn, enjoyed ghost stories. And like Claudia, I loved Nancy Drew books. One of my favorite Nancy Drews was called The Hidden Staircase, in which Nancy solves a mystery involving a secret passageway in an old house. I spent at least several afternoons one summer wandering around my own house knocking on walls hoping to find a hollow section, and feeling along the banister and floorboards hoping to find a secret trigger. Of course, since we built our house in 1960, there was no chance of finding anything secret like the passageway in Dawn’s room.
Since I so enjoyed reading about ghosts and secret passages when I was young, I wanted to write about that subject in the Baby-sitters Club series. However, to make Dawn’s story more fulfilling for the reader, I needed to create an environment that would lend itself to finding a secret passage or a ghost. Even though I never found a ghost or a secret passage in my own house, I had a lot of fun writing The Ghost at Dawn’s House. And I hope you enjoyed reading it.
Happy reading,
Ann M. Martin
* * *
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ANN MATTHEWS MARTIN was born on August 12, 1955. She grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, with her parents and her younger sister, Jane.
There are currently over 176 million copies of The Baby-sitters Club in print. (If you stacked all of these books up, the pile would be 21,245 miles high.) In addition to The Baby-sitters Club, Ann is the author of two other series, Main Street and Family Tree. Her novels include Belle Teal, A Corner of the Universe (a Newbery Honor book), Here Today, A Dog’s Life, On Christmas Eve, Everything for a Dog, Ten Rules for Living with My Sister, and Ten Good and Bad Things About My Life (So Far). She is also the coauthor, with Laura Godwin, of the Doll People series.
Ann lives in upstate New York with her dog and her cats.
Copyright © 1988 by Ann M. Martin.
Cover art by Hodges Soileau
All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc. SCHOLASTIC, THE BABY-SITTERS CLUB, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
First edition, 1996
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.
e-ISBN 978-0-545-53255-6
The Ghost at Dawn's House Page 9
